Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

a mellow baritone, had the graveliness of a long-term smoker. ‘I remembered where you keep the spare key.’ He held it out to me. ‘You’d better have it indoors for now.’

      Ronald Mason had been a heart-throb of the silver screen during the thirties and forties when he was hardly ever out of slashed doublets and diamond-buckled knee-breeches. His characters’ speeches were punctuated by antique expressions such as ‘’pon rep’ and ‘i’faith’ and ‘have at thee, varlet’. When he saw Maria-Alba holding the poker his protuberant eyes and small girlish mouth grew round with dismay. ‘Sono io, Maria-Alba,’ he cried with pure Oxford vowels. ‘Il tuo anziano amico – Ronnie.’

      ‘Anziano, vero,’ said Maria-Alba with uncharacteristic brutality, but she put down the poker.

      ‘Ronnie! How good of you to come!’ I kissed his wrinkled cheek, which smelled of lavender water. ‘But you look a little … Have they hurt you?’

      ‘No, no.’ Ronald panted as he straightened his toupee. ‘Bron coming out distracted them. Had to come. Clarissa asked me. Couldn’t let her down.’ His eyes were watering with the cold, and perhaps with emotion, for he clutched my arm and added, ‘This is a ghastly business. Poor Waldo. I’ve never been more upset.’

      I felt ashamed of all the times Portia and I had made fun of Ronnie behind his back, imitating his mincing walk and his mannered laugh and stagey speech. He had been my mother’s lover years ago and had remained worshipping at the shrine despite being replaced by a stream of younger actors. It struck me for the first time that these suitors were conspicuous by their absence. Where was Jeremy Northampton, her current cicisbeo? Recently he had been in the habit of dropping in almost daily. And where were those other friends who had so often gathered round the dining table, making assignations in the drawing room and love in the garden?

      The doorbell rang. I peered through the letter box into the eyes of an unknown youth.

      ‘Perdi’a’s Pe’als. I go’a lo’a flahs fer yew.’

      ‘What?’ Then I remembered that Perdita’s Petals was our local flower shop. ‘Oh. Yes, wait a minute. Maria-Alba, stand by with the poker. I’m going to open the door.’

      I tried to ignore the yelling that broke out the minute I put out my head. Lenses were thrust into my face as the press shouted questions about my father’s guilt, his reaction to prison life, and was it true that my father had been staying with Princess Margaret on Mustique?

      Luckily the delivery boy was fiercely voluable. ‘’Ere! Don’ you go pushing me, ma’ey. ’Ere!’ He was inflamed from indignation to outrage when his hair was rumpled by a fur-covered microphone. ‘Naff orf or I’ll push tha’ fucking thing down yer throa’!’

      While he was arguing with them I was able to gather up the bouquets and pass them back into the house to the others. Then I slammed the door, bolted it and put on the chain.

      ‘Hyenas! Vipers! Wolves!’ Ronald passed a handkerchief across his brow. ‘I am sorry for modern youth. They are uncultured yobs, wallowing in ignorance. Their understanding is superficial and their tastes are banal.’

      ‘Come and have some coffee.’ I guessed his pride had been hurt by one of the reporters asking if Ronald was my grandfather.

      ‘Thank you, Harriet, but I have a cab waiting.’ He bowed his head. ‘I except you and your dear sisters, of course, from the general censure.’

      ‘What we do with these flowers?’ asked Maria-Alba. ‘I use every vase yesterday.’

      Cordelia read one of the notes accompanying what the woman in Perdita’s Petals would probably have called ‘floral tributes’. ‘“Darling Clarissa. You must be going through hell!!! It’s too maddening our having to go away just now. Our thoughts are with you. Binny and Oscar, with our love.”’

      Binny and Oscar had been friends of my parents for years. When Oscar had temporarily left Binny for a double-jointed Olympic sprinter, as black as ink and with hair like a thunder cloud, Binny had found consolation in eating Maria-Alba’s food, gossiping with my mother and, I was almost certain, sleeping with my father. Certainly when Oscar had turned up at our house several weeks later with dark circles under his eyes and a slipped disc, there had been some difficulty in getting Binny to go home with him. She had declared that my father was twenty times the man Oscar was and then this was certainly true. Now it seemed all this was forgotten.

      ‘I don’t like the house looking like a wake,’ I said. ‘Oh no, someone’s actually sent a wreath!’ I looked at the label. It said, ‘Darling Clarissa from Jeremy. I shall never forget.’ ‘How horrible! They all believe he did it! We’ll give them to Loveday for the compost heap.’

      ‘Think of the cost of those orchids!’ moaned Ronald.

      We often joked among ourselves about Ronald’s little economies. He never entertained but was always the first to arrive at a party and the last to leave. More than once he had been seen pocketing the remaining canapés and sometimes a bottle of wine or whisky. And always after Ronnie’s visits the soap disappeared from the downstairs lav. Once even the towel. My parents were amused rather than irritated by these lapses. Ronnie still occasionally appeared in films, in cameo roles, and probably earned enough to live on, but these days his fees were as crumbs to the cake he had once commanded. Advancing age made him fearful of poverty and as my father charitably said, who could blame him?

      ‘What difference does it make?’ I said, with reference to the flowers. ‘They’ll be dead in a week anyway.’ I tried to sound careless. I was disappointed that, with the exception of Ronnie and Max Frensham, my parents’ friends had found it easier to dial the number of the nearest florist rather than come themselves to offer sympathy. But perhaps they were giving us time to adjust.

      ‘If you’re quite sure you don’t want them …’ Ronald replaced his spoiled carnation with an orchid and rearranged his hair and clothing in the hall mirror. He looked critically at his reflection. I could see that his velvet-collared coat, which must have been expensive long ago, was worn at the lapels and he was no longer able to fasten it across his stomach. He looked rather longingly at the clothes brush before putting it back into the drawer of the console table.

      ‘There you are, Ronald.’ My mother was coming downstairs, wearing her leopard coat and a pair of tinted spectacles. She was carrying a suitcase. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. A traffic accident or – something.’ She made it sound a matter of supreme indifference.

      ‘I set out the minute you rang off,’ Ronald said, with a slight air of injury. Then he straightened his tie, braced his shoulders and lifted his chin. ‘How ravishing you’re looking, my darling! The bloom on your cheek would put a rose to shame.’ He flung up his hand in a graceful gesture, just as he must have done years ago when he first said the line in front of the camera.

      ‘That wig wouldn’t fool a blind man,’ replied my mother, very nastily, I thought. ‘And the dye you’re using on the rest of it looks purple in this light.’

      I had been struck myself by the odd effect of the aubergine tufts of hair above Ronnie’s ears.

      ‘Well! You certainly don’t believe in robing naked truth with the silk of courtesy.’ Ronald looked pardonably annoyed.

      ‘You’re getting a paunch,’ was my mother’s rejoinder. ‘You’d better go and see Bo-Bo Lascelles. She’s opened a new clinic in Bruton Street. Her special diet is a week of raw beetroot juice three times a day combined with three tablespoons of kush-kush stalks from the Andes. Apparently it pulverises the fat cells.’

      ‘Knowing Bo-Bo I bet it costs an arm and a leg,’ muttered Ronald peevishly. ‘Raw beetroot! Never mind the damned grass!’

      ‘If you’re going to be moody and difficult I shall be sorry I asked you to go with me.’

      ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

      ‘I’m going